WAASAMOO-MITIGOOG | ELECTRIC FOREST — PUBLIC CITY ARCHITECTURE

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WAASAMOO-MITIGOOG | ELECTRIC FOREST
Toronto, Ontario

PUBLIC CITY was one of five shortlisted teams selected to participate in an international design competition for the 229 Richmond Street Park in Toronto. This is the Electric Forest. In Anishinaabemowin, Waasamoo-mitigoog means electric forest or trees. Throughout design, our Indigenous Placekeeper led us through teachings about the history of pine and cedar and their importance to this land and its people. The Eastern White Cedar has medicinal and spiritual significance, symbolizing strength and resilience. The Eastern White Pine has deep connections to Treaty 13 and is known in Haudenosaunee as the ”tree of peace.” The park’s dominant curvaceous forms take their cues from these trees.

The name also alludes to Electric Circus, the unscripted and kinetically vibrant MuchMusic show. MuchMusic, the Canadian institution that sparked energy and defined a spirit of belonging and open-minded culture-making in this neighbourhood for decades, was a generation’s natural cultural lab. As the park’s name conjures up the spirit of curiosity and experimentation that was MuchMusic, it integrates this powerful meditation about land and regeneration. The park will be a place electrified by charged histories and the regenerative power - mentally, psychologically, and ecologically - of a forest.

If this proposal is about regenerating living environments, it also strives to do so playfully and without austerity. Joy, contemplation, awe, and delight are foremost in our mind. A little bit nature; a little bit culture; and every bit wild, this park is designed as an energy source in the city. With the power of the ancestral forests and the vibrancy of MuchMusic all but turned off from the Queen and John neighborhood, Waasamoo-mitigoog is a playful reignition of public place in our city.